


Nunc Dimittis

by non_canonical



Series: The First Step [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, M/M, Wakes & Funerals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-25
Updated: 2011-07-25
Packaged: 2017-10-21 18:25:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/228238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/non_canonical/pseuds/non_canonical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Time to dig out his best black suit – Lestrade's got a funeral to attend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nunc Dimittis

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to my beta [madder_badder](http://madder_badder.livejournal.com) and to the guys over at [sherlockconcrit](http://sherlockconcrit.livejournal.com) for the feedback. This fic would have looked a lot different without them.

It was Mrs Hudson who answered the door.

“Come in, Inspector,” she said and Lestrade followed her into the hall.

“Mrs Hudson –” His throat constricted around the words (god, he'd thought he was over this) and he turned his head away.

His reflection grimaced at him in the wall mirror. He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them he smoothed a hand over his suit and straightened his tie. There was nothing he could do about the dark rings or the grey exhaustion.

A gentle touch on his arm. Mrs Hudson was smiling at him, but he could feel the tremors through those five tiny points of contact. A familiar waft of lavender: his mother's perfume, the one little luxury she'd always insisted on, right to the end when the fragrance had been overpowered by the disinfectant, the bed pans, the reek of fear.

“Go on up,” Mrs Hudson told him. “I need to get my hat. I'll only be a minute.”

Lestrade checked his watch; panic jolted his muscles into life. They had a minute, but not much more – he'd forgotten about the Tube strike and the traffic had been murder – and, today of all days, they couldn't be late. He took the stairs two at a time.

The door to the sitting room was open, and he knocked as he strode in. John was halfway across the room, looking startled even though Lestrade was expected, and there was something furtive in the way John wouldn't look him in the eye.

“John, are you –”

Something crunched under his foot. He lifted it between his fingertips: a plastic pipette, a faint whiff of formaldehyde clinging to it; a relic of one of Sherlock's experiments. He looked round for somewhere to deposit it, and –

The wrongness of it screeched up his spine: Sherlock's case notes still papered the wall behind the sofa.

He turned. Sherlock's books were gathering dust on the shelves, with John's best-sellers peeping out here and there.

Over on the mantelpiece: the hypodermic Sherlock had taken to taunting him with (sour disappointment on Anderson's face when he'd announced, “It's only aniseed.”)

Nowhere, _nowhere_ , was there a trace of the boxes, the boxes that all of this should have been packed into, the boxes he'd brought round in the boot of his car at least a fortnight ago. And to think he'd been worried about showing his grief, about letting everyone down when John was coping so well, when all the time the bastard had been hiding this.

John was staring at him through narrowed eyes, his body unnaturally still, and the part of Lestrade that was used to dealing with violent criminals took an instinctive step back. He cleared his throat, and John folded his arms across his chest.

“What?” he demanded in a familiar, petulant tone of voice. Words could be contagious, and it wasn't the first time Lestrade had heard John mimicking his flatmate, but this time John noticed. This time he flinched.

Footsteps clattered out on the landing. Mrs Hudson stopped with one foot over the threshold, eyes darting between the pair of them. Her mouth compressed into a firm line.

“Are you boys ready?” John's shoulders slumped, and he gave her a weary nod. “Come on, then. We'd better be going.”

They were halfway down the stairs when Lestrade spotted it: not a limp, exactly, more a hesitancy in John's step. He flinched at the unwelcome understanding, tried to bury it again – and when the shame rose like bile in his throat he shoved it down as well – because right now he had to be selfish, or he wasn't going to make it through the next hour.

Lestrade was on familiar ground as far as the park, then he had to follow John's lead into the unknown territory behind Baker Street.

Before they'd gone more than a hundred yards, John announced, “This is it.”

“Mycroft picked this?” Lestrade blurted, eyeing the grimy red-brick building. “I thought he'd have wanted something grander.” (Like Westminster Abbey, he added to himself.)

Mrs Hudson gave him a sharp look, but, fortunately, her manners won out. “It's the parish church,” she told him. “You can see it from Sher–” Her voice cracked. “From the back bedroom.” John took her arm and led her past the row of stunted buttresses, squeezed in behind the iron railings, and up to the main entrance.

“Thank you for coming John, Mrs Hudson.” Mycroft had put on weight since Lestrade had last seen him, but the eyes were still sharp in his fleshy face. “Ah, Inspector. So very good to see you.”

Mycroft's eyes were dry, his hand firm as it gripped Lestrade's. No vulgar displays of emotion, not from someone like him, someone who'd gone to all the right schools, part of the old-boy network – Lestrade had worked for his position, and if his career had stalled then he'd get it back on track by working harder, not by learning some funny handshake – and he fought the urge to crush the hand in his, to see if he could force just one genuine reaction out of the man.

Mycroft smiled in dismissal, and said, “Bonjour,” to the brunette clicking up behind them in patent heels and a dress tight enough to make Mrs Hudson purse her lips.

They went inside. And perhaps Mycroft Holmes knew what he was doing after all: columns soared up to the vaulted ceiling, light streamed through the stained glass and glinted on the gilded carvings, and it was all the more beautiful for being so unexpected.

The organ's bass notes resonated in the air as they made their way down the aisle. The coffin was already in place, and Lestrade had a dizzying moment where none of this was real, and there must have been some sort of mistake; he hadn't actually seen the body, after all.

But he had seen the autopsy reports, the photographs; he knew the damage the fall had done. He hadn't envied Mycroft the task of helping the Swiss authorities identify the remains.

Mrs Hudson sobbed into her handkerchief and John placed an arm around her shoulders, although, frankly, he looked more in need of support than she did. It was so obvious now – written all over the poor sod – the glint of moisture that he tried to blink away as he ushered Mrs Hudson to a seat, the rigid set of his back as he sat next to her.

“Do you know anyone?” John asked as the last of the mourners trickled in.

“No. Don't you?”

John shook his head. “Family, I reckon.” His voice dropped to a fierce whisper as Mycroft walked past. “Just look at them.”

Lestrade did – severely formal suits and good breeding, and a sort of pallid hauteur that he was starting to think must be hard-wired into the Holmes DNA – and he felt the slow creep of panic again, tightening around the base of his throat. Well, he might not have honed his skills in some Oxford debating society, but he'd given dozens of press conferences, and he'd weathered the worst that the tabloid hacks could throw at him. He was quite capable of standing up in front of this lot.

A very tanned young man rushed down the aisle, looking anxiously towards the front row. Mycroft twisted round in his seat, and Lestrade could finally see a resemblance to Sherlock in the way his eyes flickered, taking in the man's rumpled suit and shaggy hair. Mycroft nodded; the man's mouth twitched into a smile, and he darted into the row across from Lestrade.

Just in time: the minister took up his position; the organ wheezed to a stop; the buzz of conversation died away. The minister turned a sombre face on the congregation.

“We have come here today to remember before God our brother Sherlock; to give thanks for his life; to commend him to God our merciful redeemer and judge; to commit his body to be cremated; and to comfort one another in our grief.”

Lestrade tried to focus on the man's words, but his heart was beating faster and faster, and his stomach lurched as he followed their progress through the order of service and saw his own part rapidly approaching.

The congregation stood for _Abide With Me_ , and Lestrade joined in, relieved when his voice came clear and steady. He wiped his hands on his trousers, pressed them there for a moment to still the trembling.

Then it was, “Detective Inspector Lestrade will say a few words about Sherlock,” and he was making his way to the front.

He turned to face his audience. His eyes were drawn to John – a flash of anger, of incomprehension: it should have been him up here – then he looked up over the rows of heads, up and back to where the font dominated the rear of the church.

Lestrade swallowed. His hand went to the cue cards in his pocket.

“Sherlock Holmes was a great man. He was a good man.” Too fast; he sucked more air into his lungs and tried to slow his pace. “This city owes him a debt of gratitude.” That was better. “Yes, he was taken from us too soon, but we should measure his life by his achievements, not by his years. Through his death, he freed society of a dangerous criminal.”

He relaxed. He took his hand out of his pocket: his words were carefully chosen and well rehearsed, but the sentiment behind them needed no prompting.

He risked a look at the others as he talked: Mycroft, nodding in what he hoped was approval; Mrs Hudson, handkerchief now tucked away in her sleeve (his mother's generation: Blitz spirit); John, his hand twitching, then reaching out for hers.

Nearly there.

“As we remember and commemorate his life, I'd like you to hold onto this thought: Sherlock wouldn't have wanted us to grieve.” He paused, waiting for the suffocating pressure in his lungs to subside. “Sherlock, you will be missed. Goodbye and God bless.”

He'd made it; he'd survived. He stumbled to his chair, felt the wood press into the backs of his knees, and slumped down as the adrenalin drained out of him. What he wouldn't give for a cigarette right now. He found his fingers were gripping the battered packet he always carried, and he forced them to uncurl, to let go.

The minister was inviting them all to join in the Lord's Prayer, and Lestrade recited the words drummed into him at a long-ago Sunday school: “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” He only trotted them out at funerals and weddings these days.

Weddings. A memory ambushed him: standing at the altar, Joanna lifting her veil and turning to him with a smile; then his thoughts leapt – painfully, inevitably – to the last time he'd seen her, tearfully closing the door while he stood there with a stupid look on his face, clutching his suitcase.

He blinked. The minister was saying, “The blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always.”

And Lestrade was responding, “Amen,” along with the others, and it was over.

He hauled himself to his feet and began to shuffle out into the aisle. The coffin stood abandoned at the front (lonely without even a single wreath), and suddenly Lestrade didn't want to walk away, to _leave_ Sherlock there.

John barged him aside, hurrying unsteadily towards the door, and Lestrade watched him shove his way through the knot of mourners blocking the entrance.

“Is he okay?” he asked.

“Not my place, dear,” Mrs Hudson told him firmly. (Good at keeping secrets, that one.) “You'll have to ask him. Now, I must go and thank the vicar for such a lovely service.”

Lestrade blinked in the afternoon sunshine. He stepped out into the road, already looking forward to the first pint of the evening.

A car horn blared. Lestrade dashed out of the way, and he found himself up against the church railings, face to face with the brunette in the heels. He tried not to stare as she closed her lips around a cigarette. She fumbled in her handbag, and before he knew what he was doing he'd pulled the lighter from his pocket and was holding it out.

“Allow me,” he said.

“Thank you,” she said, the faintest burr of Paris in her voice.

She accepted the light graciously enough, but the corners of her mouth kept twitching in amusement. Well, it had sounded like a pick up line, and he was probably old enough to be her father. He realised he was holding his stomach in, and he let the muscles relax, feeling the little paunch settle back into place.

She inhaled with obvious pleasure, and as the smoke trickled from the lush red 'O' of her mouth he felt desire spark through him. Desire – he couldn't deny what it was any longer – a deep aching need (for her, someone, anyone).

And, god, he'd have to speak to a solicitor (and those condoms were probably out of date, and maybe he should join a gym), and he definitely had to buy his own place – they'd have to sell the house, couldn't afford two mortgages – and it was all too sudden, too much. There was a clenching pain in his chest (Christ, he was still too young for a heart attack) and the pavement seemed to tilt under his feet.

When the world righted itself, Lestrade was hunched over, his hands aching where they clutched the railings. He breathed through the last of the light-headedness before he dared to let go. The woman was drifting away in a haze of perfume and cigarette smoke.

John stood alone on the far pavement, watching him, his face wrinkled in concern.

Lestrade straightened up. Time to say goodbye, to go through the polite fictions: must keep in touch; let's go for a pint some time; give me a call. Except he couldn't do it. He couldn't stomach the thought of John going back to that flat, still being there a year up the line – surrounded by a dead man's possessions – the way he was stuck in his own magnolia coloured limbo, endlessly renewing his short-term lease.

Lestrade crossed over to him.

John gestured vaguely towards the church, the people gathering outside. “Sherlock would have hated all this,” he said.

“He'd have laughed,” Lestrade corrected him. “That's why he said he wanted donations instead of flowers.”

“So, did you give to the Campaign Against CCTV?”

“Not really the done thing, in my line of work. I went for Obesity Awareness instead.”

That brought a wry twist to John's mouth, but his eyes told a different story, and if Lestrade couldn't quite decipher what it was, then he was certain he could find out. He was a detective, after all, and it was just a question of motive.

“Some of the guys are meeting up in the pub later,” he said. “If you don't mind skipping the wake, we could head down there now.”

“Yes, thanks.” John's face softened into his first genuine smile of the afternoon. “That would be good.”

Mycroft gave them an arch look and said, “I quite understand,” when first Lestrade and then John made their apologies.

Mrs Hudson wasn't quite so forgiving. “Well, I'm going, even if you two aren't,” she scolded. “But I thought we were all going to share a cab.”

“Perhaps I can arrange something.” Mycroft took a step backwards, intercepting the man walking past. “Ah, Victor, you'll make sure Mrs Hudson gets to the reception, won't you?”

Lestrade recognised the tanned individual who'd sat opposite him earlier

“Pleased to meet you,” he said, in a perfect Home Counties accent at odds with his scruffy appearance. “I'm Victor Trevor.”

Now that he was closer, Lestrade could see he had the sort of deep, natural bronze that came from time outdoors in a hot country. Add that to his rugby player's physique, and the man seemed a bit too wholesome, a bit too healthy, to be a friend of Sherlock's. At any other time, Lestrade would have been curious, but today he was anxious to get away and all he caught was “a community agricultural project in Ghana” as they made their escape.

They stood side by side up on the main road, John scanning the oncoming traffic for a cab and Lestrade watching the muscles of the man's jaw tense and then relax, over and over.

When the silence was on the verge of turning awkward, John said, “Thank you. For the bash tonight.”

“I couldn't leave you with that bunch.”

“No. I mean, thanks for organising it.”

“Oh.” Lestrade shrugged it off. “It's not going to be anything fancy.”

Another cab rattled past, its light already turned off. Tube strike day: alternative forms of transport were in short supply.

“Come on.” John turned and marched off, not waiting to see if Lestrade was following. “I need to stretch my legs.”

Lestrade caught up with him just inside the park gates, and they joined the tourists and the joggers on the path down to the boating lake.

John ploughed ahead, eyes fixed on the path, the tendons of his neck stiff and tense. This wasn't exactly the chat over a quiet pint that Lestrade had planned, but needs must.

“The first time I met Sherlock Holmes,” he said, trying to sound casual while he hurried to keep up, “I thought he was just another messed up rich kid with a drug problem. Well, a clever rich kid with a drug problem: he was leaving his dealer's, but I couldn't find anything incriminating on him.”

John had to dodge around a ruthlessly wielded pushchair, and when he continued it was at a more sociable pace.

“A couple of weeks later,” Lestrade went on, “I found him standing over the dealer's body. He wouldn't have been the first junkie to get desperate and do something stupid. Then he started looking at the man's teeth with this magnifier, and that was when I knew I'd got one of the weird ones.”

John grimaced as though in pain, and he stuffed his hands into his pockets.

Lestrade smiled a bitter-sweet smile. “He called me an idiot when I arrested him.”

John's left hand re-emerged, cradling a familiar piece of black plastic. He rubbed his thumb across it, and when he pulled it open, Lestrade saw that the lens was cracked. Sherlock must have had it on him when he died, and now Lestrade knew what his first line of attack had to be.

“I was proud of what Sherlock did,” he said. “But sometimes I worry I pushed him into it.”

John shook his head. “Nobody –” he said, but his voice was creaky and he had to stop and clear his throat. “Nobody could make Sherlock do something he didn't want to do. You know that.”

“Yeah, maybe. Not necessarily the same as believing it, though.”

John winced. “Well, if we're going down this road, it was my fault as much as yours. I wasn't even there when he needed me, was I?”

“No one knew Moriarty would go after him like that. Even Sherlock didn't see it coming. It wasn't your fault, either.”

“I know.” John's head jerked in a small nod, and the tightness around his eyes eased a little. “I know,” he repeated. Lestrade believed him; it wasn't guilt, then.

John pulled himself straighter, and with a cheeriness that fooled neither of them, asked, “So, who's going tonight?”

“The usual suspects,” Lestrade told him. “Anderson, Donovan, Hopkins. Some of the people from Barts.”

“Molly Hooper?”

“Yeah, sorry. I never know what to say to her, either, poor woman. I mean, can you imagine: falling for Sherlock Holmes.”

Silence. Lestrade took few more steps before he realised John wasn't following. He turned, and –

“Oh shit,” he croaked. “You and Sherlock?” He didn't need to hear the answer: the aching misery on John's face said it all.

He knew he should say something else – something better – but his mouth worked uselessly and no more words would come.

“Problem?” John snapped, his soft eyes hardening, and Lestrade had always been disturbed by the way John smiled when he was angry.

And no, there wasn't a problem. But his legs were feeling a bit wobbly right now, and he wasn't sure he was going to make it to that bench. His backside hit the wood with a thump.

He stared vacantly across the water, dimly aware of the attendants covering the boats for the evening, until John stepped into his line of sight and scowled down at him. And maybe he didn't have a bloody clue what to say, but he'd be a coward if he walked away from this now.

So, without preamble, Lestrade said, “My wife kicked me out.” It wasn't quite as painful as he'd expected.

John flinched. “Oh, oh right,” he stammered. “Sorry.”

“Don't be. It was a while ago. One minute we were arguing about me smoking, and the next minute she was throwing me out the house.” He twisted the tarnished band of gold, half pulled it from his finger. “No, that's not true. It wasn't about the smoking, that was just the last straw.”

John eased down next to him. “You're still wearing the ring.”

“I told myself it was just a trial separation, got obsessed with the smoking. I kept thinking if I managed to quit, then everything would be okay and she'd take me back.”

He took out the battered packet and prised open the lid (could still feel an echo of the old temptation), but the crumpled cigarettes had lost their appeal. Once upon a time he'd have lit one just to prove a point; he was different now.

“I've been kidding myself. Should have admitted it a long time ago.” He stopped, pictured John's flat, looking for all the world as though Sherlock had just popped out. “Can't go on living in denial. Comes a time when you have to move on.”

There it was, out in the open. John would either talk or he wouldn't.

But John seemed to be struggling to find his voice, and when it came at last it was so hoarse Lestrade hardly recognised it. “He didn't know how I feel. I couldn't tell him.”

“Surely it would have been better to say something.” Which might have sounded callous, but he was sure that John had been over this particular ground already (God, he didn't want to think about how many times John had been over it).

John shifted uncomfortably. “I was going to, once the case was finished. Just as soon as he'd brought down Moriarty. You didn't see how he was, towards the end there.”

“You know I wasn't on the investigation at that point. And once he dropped the other cases, well, I didn't see much of him at all.”

“Me neither. He'd disappear for weeks at a time. And even when he was there, he –” John's hands clenched, and when they opened again they were trembling. “All he could think about was Moriarty.” His voice wavered. “I didn't know if I could compete.”

Lestrade dropped his gaze.

“Mycroft asked me to give the eulogy,” John said. “But I couldn't do it, couldn't stand up there and say what Sherlock means to me. Because I don't know.”

He was never going to find out, either, and finally Lestrade understood how John was mourning not just Sherlock, but the stillborn future they might have shared.

“What do you think he'd have said?” John asked: the one (unanswerable) question that was chaining him to the past.

“Christ, you can't ask me that.”

Lestrade pulled back, aghast, but the doctor simply nodded. Lestrade drew in a shaky breath and let it out noisily through his nose.

He ran his hand along the arm of the bench, felt the grain catch at his skin as he traced the words scrawled in thick black marker: Josh + Chloe forever. A surge of warmth: he found himself hoping it would come true for them. Must be getting sentimental in his old age.

“Look,” he said, “if you need a change of scene, there's a bloke in HR who's after a lodger. Got a nice place in Bermondsey, but he's struggling with the mortgage.”

“Okay, yeah maybe. Give me his number.” John must have seen the scepticism on Lestrade's face, because he said, “Look, the rent's only paid until the end of next week and I can't afford double.”

The low sun etched the lines more deeply into John's face, and he looked old, but Lestrade probably didn't look too clever himself right now. He sat up straighter, and rolled the worst of the tension out of his shoulders.

“Come on,” he said, getting to his feet. John nodded, and gave him a weary smile.

They retraced their steps as twilight started to blanket the park, emerging onto Baker Street just as the first street lamps were winking into life.

John stopped outside 221. Very slowly, he reached out and put his key in the lock. The door swung open and the gloomy hallway stretched out in front of him.

“Thought I'd make a start packing up his things,” he said, and his voice was raw with pain. “It'll keep Mycroft off my back, at any rate.” Which was pretty weak, as attempts at humour went, but at least it was a start.

John stepped inside, and was swallowed by the darkness. Then he turned, pale face looming out of the shadows, and stopped right on the threshold.

“Look, I know this is going to make you late, but I wouldn't say no to a hand.”

Lestrade nodded. When he could get the words out, he said, “They'll manage without me,” and he closed the door behind him.

John switched on the lights.


End file.
